100 books like The Age of Wonder

By Richard Holmes,

Here are 100 books that The Age of Wonder fans have personally recommended if you like The Age of Wonder. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

Larrie D. Ferreiro Author Of Measure of the Earth: The Enlightenment Expedition That Reshaped Our World

From my list on voyages of discovery about science, not conquest.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an engineer, scientist, and historian, I’ve always been fascinated by how science has always served the political goals of nations and empires. Today, we look at the Space Race to land a person on the Moon as a part of the Cold War effort to establish the intellectual and cultural dominance of the United States and the Soviet Union, even as it created new technologies and completely changed our understanding of the world. When I came across the Geodesic Mission to the Equator 1735-1744, I realized that even in the 18th century, voyages of discovery could do more than simply find new lands to conquer and exploit–they could, and did extend our knowledge of nature and mankind.

Larrie's book list on voyages of discovery about science, not conquest

Larrie D. Ferreiro Why did Larrie love this book?

Alexander von Humboldt’s name is synonymous with scientific discovery today–the Humboldt Current, the Humboldt Redwoods State Park, and countless species named for him. Humboldt revolutionized our modern understanding of the natural sciences–geology, biology, meteorology, and much else–with his epic five-year voyage that set off in 1799 and brought him through the Amazon, the Caribbean, and North and South America. 

Like Malaspina before him, Humboldt studied not only the flora and fauna of these regions but also their peoples and the political turmoil that was building towards revolution. He met with the leaders of the time–Thomas Jefferson and Simón Bolívar among them–and opened their eyes to the richness of their lands. Unlike Malaspina, Humboldt’s works were published to wide acclaim and established the idea that all nature, including human nature, is interconnected. 

By Andrea Wulf,

Why should I read it?

15 authors picked The Invention of Nature as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD

WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2016

'A thrilling adventure story' Bill Bryson

'Dazzling' Literary Review

'Brilliant' Sunday Express

'Extraordinary and gripping' New Scientist

'A superb biography' The Economist

'An exhilarating armchair voyage' GILES MILTON, Mail on Sunday

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.

His colourful adventures read…


Book cover of Nathaniel's Nutmeg: Or, the True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History

Eleanor Ford Author Of The Nutmeg Trail: Recipes and Stories Along the Ancient Spice Routes

From my list on to spice up your shelves.

Why am I passionate about this?

In my writing, food is a means to explore culture and understand the world. I’ve been described as a ‘culinary detective’. I collect and create eclectic, evocative recipes from around the globe so I can travel from my kitchen when I'm back home in London. The Nutmeg Trail follows my multi-award-winning books, Fire Islands and Samarkand.

Eleanor's book list on to spice up your shelves

Eleanor Ford Why did Eleanor love this book?

Delving into the bloodiest and most tragic period of spice’s past, Milton’s novel reveals the extraordinary link between nutmeg and colonisation. It was the seed from which the British Empire grew. If fiction is your preferred way to explore history – and what a history spice has! – then this is the book for you.

By Giles Milton,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Nathaniel's Nutmeg as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A true tale of high adventure in the South Seas.

The tiny island of Run is an insignificant speck in the Indonesian archipelago. Just two miles long and half a mile wide, it is remote, tranquil, and, these days, largely ignored.

Yet 370 years ago, Run's harvest of nutmeg (a pound of which yielded a 3,200 percent profit by the time it arrived in England) turned it into the most lucrative of the Spice Islands, precipitating a battle between the all-powerful Dutch East India Company and the British Crown. The outcome of the fighting was one of the most spectacular…


Book cover of The Overstory

Steve Tomasula Author Of Ascension

From my list on the invention of nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

I know a book can change a person’s life because one of my early life-changing events was reading Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. From it, I took away the idea of how a fact is made, not discovered, and how facts, even those as “objective” as those in science, are different in different ages. It’s less a matter of one age being wrong about “Nature,” for example, than it is that a concept like “Nature” emerges out of a scrum of attitudes, technologies, conventions, etc. 

Steve's book list on the invention of nature

Steve Tomasula Why did Steve love this book?

I especially loved that this book has the ability to bring together elements as disparate as science, politics, and our common humanity. I repeatedly stopped reading to think about what was written: a depiction of our society and our place at the crossroads of possible futures that will depend on our attitudes to the plants and animals that make up the earth we share.

But the moral core at the center of this novel makes it more than just a good story. I kept thinking that it was easy to imagine Powers’s book as what many people believe is the “Great American Novel,” Moby-Dick, if we replace Melville’s whale with Powers’s trees and set it in the present instead of the 19th century. 

By Richard Powers,

Why should I read it?

32 authors picked The Overstory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see…


Book cover of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Rui Diogo Author Of Meaning of Life, Human Nature, and Delusions: How Tales about Love, Sex, Races, Gods and Progress Affect Our Lives and Earth's Splendor

From my list on understand human nature and sexuality.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an unusual scientist in the sense that I have doctorates in both biology and anthropology, so I am very interested in the dichotomy between what our bodies truly want (biology) and how we are supposed to behave, or tell others to behave, in our cultural settings (cultural anthropology). Amazingly, studies show that we spend more time and attention in our lives living for others for what they think of us, than doing what we truly want, and that we often regret that, when we are close to dying. These books make us reconsider that way of living, so we can change this before it is too late. 

Rui's book list on understand human nature and sexuality

Rui Diogo Why did Rui love this book?

This book was written by a biologist with a profound knowledge of the natural world, including our species. It is one of the best books written by a scientist. It combines biology, anthropology, and history to explain a lot about where we came from and why some countries are wealthier than others, rooting such discussions on biology.

By Jared Diamond,

Why should I read it?

17 authors picked Guns, Germs, and Steel as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, a classic of our time, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond dismantles racist theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for its broadest patterns.

The story begins 13,000 years ago, when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire human population. Around that time, the developmental paths of human societies on different continents began to diverge greatly. Early domestication of wild plants and animals in the Fertile Crescent, China,…


Book cover of Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World

Susan Freinkel Author Of Plastic: A Toxic Love Story

From my list on important things hiding in plain sight.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been writing about science and the environment for over 20 years, but always I find myself gravitating to the non-sciency, non-naturey part of stories. My favorite part of my first book, on the American chestnut, was about how people in Appalachia loved and relied on this tree that was largely killed off in the early twentieth century. For Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, I was as fascinated by the cultural and psychological effects of plastic as its environmental and health impacts. One of the things I’ve learned is that some of the most powerful things shaping our lives – for better or worse – are ones we don’t notice or see. 

Susan's book list on important things hiding in plain sight

Susan Freinkel Why did Susan love this book?

The North Atlantic between Iceland and Canada once teemed with cod. That rich fishery is what lured Europeans across the Atlantic in the first place, starting with the Vikings. And salt curing of the fish – a method perfected by medieval Basque whalers is what made those long voyages possible. By the mid-sixteenth century, 60 percent of all fish eaten in Europe was cod. It soon would be a staple of new world diets – and one of the pleasures of the book are the cod recipes across the centuries. Above all, I appreciate how Kurlansky makes us care about this fish, whose numbers are now dwindling. As he writes, “the cod is on the wrong end of this 1,000-year fishing spree.” 

By Mark Kurlansky,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Cod as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Who would ever think that a book on cod would make a compulsive read? And yet this is precisely what Kurlansky has done' Express on Sunday

The Cod. Wars have been fought over it, revolutions have been triggered by it, national diets have been based on it, economies and livelihoods have depended on it. To the millions it has sustained, it has been a treasure more precious that gold. This book spans 1,000 years and four continents. From the Vikings to Clarence Birdseye, Mark Kurlansky introduces the explorers, merchants, writers, chefs and fisherman, whose lives have been interwoven with this…


Book cover of Creation: A Novel

Thomas Suddendorf Author Of The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals

From my list on peculiar events and issues that changed the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of psychology at the University of Queensland and I am fascinated by big picture questions about how we became the peculiar creatures that we are. Shortly after I was asked to compile a list of recommendations, I attended my friend Ashley Hay’s book launch of Gum. This beautiful book does not just present a bunch of facts about Australia’s iconic trees, but uses this lens to examine many broader issues from colonial history to climate change. Reading it inspired me to create the present list of books that, unlike the rote learning of dates that marked many history classes at school, take much more interesting, novel vantage points from which to understand why things turned out the way they did.

Thomas' book list on peculiar events and issues that changed the world

Thomas Suddendorf Why did Thomas love this book?

Occasionally, a novel perspective on events that changed the world can also be presented in a novel (sorry). Gore Vidal’s Creation is one example that left a deep impression on me. With the invention of writing, human philosophies could manifest in lasting new ways that profoundly shaped the world. Vidal’s historical fiction invites us to entertain the possibility that a single human living in the 5th century BC could have met the founding fathers of many of today’s moral traditions. It tells the story of the imaginary life of Cyrus, a Persian diplomat, grandson of Zoroaster, who travels the world and meets Socrates, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Confucius among others. This may not be an easy read, and I recall it involved a lot of name-dropping, but it is worth the effort – providing a fascinating comparative perspective on religion and the human quest for meaning.

By Gore Vidal,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Creation as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A sweeping novel of politics, war, philosophy, and adventure–in a restored edition, featuring never-before-published material from Gore Vidal’s original manuscript–Creationoffers a captivating grand tour of the ancient world.
Cyrus Spitama, grandson of the prophet Zoroaster and lifelong friend of Xerxes, spent most of his life as Persian ambassador for the great king Darius. He traveled to India, where he discussed nirvana with Buddha, and to the warring states of Cathay, where he learned of Tao from Master Li and fished on the riverbank with Confucius. Now blind and aged in Athens–the Athens of Pericles, Sophocles, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Socrates–Cyrus recounts…


Book cover of Measuring the World

Karl Sigmund Author Of The Waltz of Reason: The Entanglement of Mathematics and Philosophy

From my list on the poetic side of science.

Why am I passionate about this?

I spent most of my life as a professor of mathematics at the University of Vienna, faithful to my first boyish infatuation. Yet, I always had an eye for the dangerous charms of philosophy. In the end, I succumbed and wrote The Waltz of Reason, convinced that the countless interactions of mathematics and philosophy provide the greatest adventure stories of reason, the scientific sagas which will remain as the most enduring and the most romantic account of humanity’s progress.   

Karl's book list on the poetic side of science

Karl Sigmund Why did Karl love this book?

This book is a novel, unabashedly. It describes the lives of our old friend Humboldt and the math genius Karl Friedrich Gauss, culminating in their 1828 encounter in Berlin.

This meeting is a well-documented fact. Not everything else is. Daniel Kehlmann takes his liberties with history. He even boasts of his leger-de-main, like Alexandre Dumas.

The overall outcome is splendidly funny and uncannily wise. The cap-stone irony is that the most implausible episodes of the book are not the ones that the author invented.    


By Daniel Kehlmann,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Measuring the World as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Measuring the World recreates the parallel but contrasting lives of two geniuses of the German Enlightenment - the naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt and the mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss. Towards the end of the 18th century, these two brilliant young Germans set out to measure the world.

Humboldt, a Prussian aristocrat schooled for greatness, negotiates savannah and jungle, climbs the highest mountain then known to man, counts head lice on the heads of the natives, and explores every hole in the ground.

Gauss, a man born in poverty who will be recognised as the greatest mathematician since…


Book cover of Barkskins

Steve Tomasula Author Of Ascension

From my list on the invention of nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

I know a book can change a person’s life because one of my early life-changing events was reading Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. From it, I took away the idea of how a fact is made, not discovered, and how facts, even those as “objective” as those in science, are different in different ages. It’s less a matter of one age being wrong about “Nature,” for example, than it is that a concept like “Nature” emerges out of a scrum of attitudes, technologies, conventions, etc. 

Steve's book list on the invention of nature

Steve Tomasula Why did Steve love this book?

Only separated by two years, I think Proulx’s Barkskins and Powers’s Overstory can be thought of as companions to one another. I like how the pun of Powers’s title refers to both the tree canopy that towers over the landscape and the overarching story that all of his sub-stories form as they come together, while I think of Proulx’s Barkskins as the meaty understory.

It opens in Canada’s colonial past when the continent was a vast carpet of old-growth forest. Explorers arrived, shortly followed by French settlers and indentured servants contracted into a kind of slavery to clear-cut the forests. I like how she leads us from this pristine beginning, through the exploitation of the forest and its indigenous dwellers, to the global distribution of lumber. In some ways Overstory picks up where the epic that is Barkskins leaves off.

By Annie Proulx,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Barkskins as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017

NOW A MAJOR TELEVISION SERIES

From Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain, comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world's forests.

In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, Rene Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a "seigneur," for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters - barkskins. Rene suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to…


Book cover of The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World

Karl Sigmund Author Of The Waltz of Reason: The Entanglement of Mathematics and Philosophy

From my list on the poetic side of science.

Why am I passionate about this?

I spent most of my life as a professor of mathematics at the University of Vienna, faithful to my first boyish infatuation. Yet, I always had an eye for the dangerous charms of philosophy. In the end, I succumbed and wrote The Waltz of Reason, convinced that the countless interactions of mathematics and philosophy provide the greatest adventure stories of reason, the scientific sagas which will remain as the most enduring and the most romantic account of humanity’s progress.   

Karl's book list on the poetic side of science

Karl Sigmund Why did Karl love this book?

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, two astronomers set out from Paris, one due north towards Dunkerque, the other south towards Barcelona. Their task was to measure the length of the meridian arc between these two towns and, ultimately, to determine the precise length of the new-fangled meter, meant to serve as a unit of measurement “for all people, for all time.”

This may appear to be a humdrum task. It was anything but. At that time, royal heads fell, armies sprung from the ground, and money went into hiding. The author is as painstaking about historical detail as his protagonists were about their measurements. He left out no provincial archive and no calculation scribbled on a margin.

The outcome reads like a novel, splendidly conveying the quixotic flavor of the enterprise and the Sisyphus-like dedication of its protagonists.  

By Ken Alder,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Measure of All Things as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In June 1792, amidst the chaos of the French Revolution, two intrepid astronomers set out in opposite directions on an extraordinary journey. Starting in Paris, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre would make his way north to Dunkirk, while Pierre-François-André Méchain voyaged south to Barcelona. Their mission was to measure the world, and their findings would help define the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance between the pole and the equator—a standard that would be used “for all people, for all time.”

The Measure of All Things is the astonishing tale of one of history’s greatest scientific adventures. Yet behind the public triumph…


Book cover of The Maniac

Karl Sigmund Author Of The Waltz of Reason: The Entanglement of Mathematics and Philosophy

From my list on the poetic side of science.

Why am I passionate about this?

I spent most of my life as a professor of mathematics at the University of Vienna, faithful to my first boyish infatuation. Yet, I always had an eye for the dangerous charms of philosophy. In the end, I succumbed and wrote The Waltz of Reason, convinced that the countless interactions of mathematics and philosophy provide the greatest adventure stories of reason, the scientific sagas which will remain as the most enduring and the most romantic account of humanity’s progress.   

Karl's book list on the poetic side of science

Karl Sigmund Why did Karl love this book?

Again, fiction that is based on facts–but in this novel, the facts take over and engulf the reader in an apocalyptic tornado.

The book has an obsessive quality. Most of it deals with the life of the legendary mathematician John von Neumann, known as the “father of the computer,” who switched from pure mathematics to nuclear destruction, artificial life, and various other games.

Labatut’s admirably well-researched saga explores the inhuman face of science and the demonic aspects of progress “for which there is no cure” (copyright John von Neumann). A technological maelstrom to give Edgar Allan Poe the creeps, the book shows that romantic science has come a long way since Dr. Frankenstein. 


By Benjamin Labatut,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Maniac as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the author of When We Cease to Understand the World: a dazzling, kaleidoscopic book about the destructive chaos lurking in the history of computing and AIJohnny von Neumann was an enigma. As a young man, he stunned those around him with his monomaniacal pursuit of the unshakeable foundations of mathematics. But when his faith in this all-encompassing system crumbled, he began to put his prodigious intellect to use for those in power. As he designed unfathomable computer systems and aided the development of the atomic bomb, his work pushed increasingly into areas that were beyond human comprehension and control…


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